Mozilla Closes Down Critical Security Holes

The Mozilla Foundation has just released Firefox version 2.0.0.10 which resolves three critical vulnerabilities – but new issues have already reared their ugly heads.

One of the most serious vulnerabilities concerned handling of .jar files. An error in the Jar protocol implementation allowed cross-site scripting attacks on filters and other safeguards to grab login information and other data. Another scenario describes attacks with carefully crafted archives. Redirects allowed attackers to exploit the vulnerability. The second error to have been removed was exploitable by setting the "window.location" to redirect HTTP headers and thus launch cross-site scripting attacks.

The third error originated from a memory management bug which attackers could exploit to crash the browser or execute malicious code on the victim’s system. These vulnerabilities also affect Mozilla Seamonkey, a new version of which (1.1.7) will become available in the next few days.

But shortly after version 2.0.0.10 of Firefox was released, the next crop of bugs was identified. US-based developer Kevin Han has reported a bug that prevents the browser from displaying graphics embedded using Javascript. The new version responds to the "canvas.drawImage()" instruction with an error message of "NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE"; instead of displaying vector graphics, the method now draws pixel images in them.

Despite the new bug, the Firefox developers still advise users to update to the new version of the browser. The Mozilla Foundation servers have versions in various languages with distribution packages due to follow in the next few days.